“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” ~e.e Cummings
Here is an unsettling idea: Most of us are not who we think we are. We are not the people we bring to work; we are not the people we show to our parents and children; and sometimes we are not the people we show our friends.
Most of us go through our entire lives wearing a series of masks.
We have different masks for different purposes and occasions: the “perfect” mask of someone who’s always strong, positive, and together; the professional mask for today’s meeting; the expert mask that we put on when teaching or advising; the malleable and energetic one we put on when selling our skills or flogging our wares.
Our masks become so comfortable we lose awareness that we are wearing them. But make no mistake, the masks we wear are not who we are.
Those masks that we put on to protect ourselves, that we reach for to be taken seriously, that we don because we think we should be that soft-spoken, outgoing, or strong, these masks are not who we are.
Beneath our masks are real, sentient human beings, people with opinions and passions, people who can be angry and impatient; human beings who can be deeply empathetic and compassionate.
If we want to be reminded of what a real-life, uncensored human looks like, spend some time with a baby. These little cherubs laugh with their whole bodies, and they do it frequently and loudly. They cry with gusto, their bellies expanding like a balloon when they are building up to a real howl.
If they are already talking, they voice their opinions clearly and honestly. “Don’t like it. Want more. No, not going.”
Their questions are beautiful and profound because of their honesty and completely untarnished way of experiencing the world.
Most of all, when watching these little humans, we can observe that wherever they are, whatever they are doing, they are fully in it. We work our whole lives to recapture this authenticity and ability to be present.
Some time early in our development, something tragic happens. Maybe it happens the first time we are given signals that being jealous of a sibling is not appropriate, that crying when we are hurt is being dramatic, or that being loud is annoying. We get signals that the way we are behaving is not making the adults around us happy.
Little by little, bit by bit, we adopt socially acceptable behaviors, facial expressions, voice volumes, and agreeable ideas that harden into a series of masks.
In any given moment, our truth lies beneath the masks we wear, sometimes screaming for oxygen. We work really hard to stuff our truth down, to temper ourselves to fit in, to follow the rather rigid rules of social acceptability.
We need to be authentic to fully express ourselves in the world. When we try to stuff down our inner voice or pretend it doesn’t exist, it fights back. Stuffed inside our body, repressed feelings can lead to depression, insomnia, physical pain, and if we continue, diseases like cancer and heart disease. This is real. Inauthenticity makes us sick.
Thankfully, our authentic selves have enormous strength. I say thankfully because these breakdowns of our coping mechanisms often lead us to our greatest insights about ourselves.
The people I know who are fully and authentically themselves have been led there by difficult events, by a crisis that shook their world, by insights that have loosened their masks long enough to reveal the people underneath waiting to breathe and live life fully.
This has definitely been my experience. My divorce was a crisis point. Although it was over a decade ago, it remains the most transforming single event of my life. In an instant, any ideas that my former life had created were blown to smithereens.
I saw with glaring clarity how the married person I had become was a role I was playing. For years I had been editing my behavior and my dreams to fit what I thought I was supposed to be. I wasn’t even sure who that person was, but I knew she was more patient and her energy was smaller, and it didn’t overwhelm people.
Worse, I began to understand that I didn’t even know who I was. I’d been wearing the mask of Olympic athlete, public figure, wife, and mother for so long that I wondered if I was still in there.
When my marriage blew up, I was possessed with renewed energy. This wasn’t because my husband was a rotten guy who had kept me under his thumb; this was because the pain, the upheaval, and the shock of what had happened broke my mask in one fell swoop. A life crisis put me back on the path of discovering my authenticity.
If all this sounds a little hokey to you, think about something really difficult you have experienced, like the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, or the end of a primary relationship. Often in these times of extreme crisis, we make deep connections with others—the friends that support us, the sister who holds our hand by a parent’s deathbed. In crisis, people can drop their masks and simply reach out for one another, human to human.
There is something so magical and refreshing about this connection that many people never come back fully into their mask-wearing afterward. Life has new meaning, and the desire to live connected and live authentically becomes a motto for life.
When I shredded the masks I was wearing, I found myself filled with creative energy. It turns out that all that pretending is pretty exhausting. When I stopped trying to be who I thought I was supposed to be, it was like I plugged my soul into a current of electric life energy. I started writing books, taking courses, painting, studying yoga, and doing all sorts of things I didn’t consciously know I wanted to do.
Through the pain of upheaval and loss, I freed myself of the personas that I’d layered on top of my authenticity for decades.
Reconnecting with my truth was a new and exciting adventure as well as a coming home. In terms of my mental and physical health, I believe coming home to myself saved my life. It could save yours.
So say what you really feel. Make the choices you really want to make. Forget who you think you’re supposed to be and let yourself be as you are. At the very least, finding the courage to reconnect with the self inside yourself could be the single most liberating act of your life.
About Silken Laumann
Four-time Olympian Silken Laumann is one of Canada’s most inspirational leaders, a best-selling author, and a highly recognizable and beloved athlete. As an elite athlete, mental health and child advocate, speaker, writer, and life coach, Silken has made her work reaching her own potential and helping others reach theirs.
Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine.
I liked the article, its bitter sweet how it is often moving through the tough times that we learn how to confront the reality behind the roles/personas/masks we take on.
I agree with Patricia though; we must be careful not to ‘go to war’ with our personas/masks as they play an important role in relating to the outside world. And if we are not careful even Authenticity can become a mask we put on.
Understanding the role of the mask is a necessary step in the development of a healthy relation to the ego as part of individuation process… it is an paradox that it takes a healthy ego to “let go” of itself and one’s personas/masks/roles
While I understand that to function in society, as an employee or a boss, as a student or a teacher, as a person in a relationship, or any other role we take on, we may not be our essential/authentic selves. However, I think the problem comes when we identify with our roles. To call the different roles we play masks and inauthentic is not helpful as it implies we’re lying and being a phony. More helpful would be to not identify with our roles and see them for what they are: parts of ourselves that help us get along with others and not our essential self. I save my essential self, my ‘authentic’ self for people that I trust and those I know deserve to see me authentically. When I teach, I strut my teacher self and let her rip. When I’m with people I know who get me, my essential self flies her freak flag. I just know the difference between those two parts of my complex being. I know that I am not the roles I play.
My divorce was also a pivotal point in my life as far as personal growth goes. Thank you for a lovely article.
I don’t wear a mask, I practice certain behaviors depending on what I’m doing. It’s called being an adult.
So we should strive to be annoying crybabies.
Got it. I’ll report back on how it goes. Not entirely sanguine on the prospects.
Yeah, that’s all great if you don’t need to give a crap about anybody/anything. Dealing with my wife’s sudden disability has me all annoyed/frustrated? Sure, just tell her I’m feeling that way, so SHE can feel like crap? But at least I will “feel authentic”.
Grow up…your “philosophy” sounds like a spoiled sophomore justifying their rudeness and insensitivity as “authenticity”.
So in today’s world, if you are in Hollywood and a Christian and people find out, you won’t get any more parts (this happened to some friends of mine).
If you are in Silicon Valley and you think marriage is a religious rite between a man and a woman, then you get fired.
If you are married and polyamorous with a beloved mistress, then you get an expensive divorce.
I personally believe it would hard to live free without a job, blacklisted from getting a job, and having to pay alimony to someone you love.
Someones been reading Gurdjieff
Genuineness may be a losing proposition for some people. Some of us must act just to seem normal in a world that treats any mental abnormality as proof of pariah status. So it is with Asperger’s syndrome. My ‘authentic self’ is an unwelcome freak. I have no natural love or empathy; I have to create the image of those through my own actions.But that fakery makes a better world.
Eleanor Roosevelt, who said “Manners are formalized kindness,” was more authentic than most of us could ever dream of being. I see “authentic” crazy people on the street, and I see “authentic” bratty selfish people driving Lexuses. I say: refine the masks, and by all means, keep them.
There is a certain amount of decorum necessary to conduct human affairs. Unfortunately, we need eachother, so this is unavoidable. To your point that repressed feelings can lead to all manner of terrible things, I offer this: expressed feelings will often lead to everyone hating you. Once everyone hates you, you may experience depression, anxiety, heart disease, et al….
“Little by little, bit by bit, we adopt socially acceptable behaviors, facial expressions, voice volumes, and agreeable ideas…” Wouldn’t want to be around anyone for long, not even a child, who has not learned these things. We call them social skills and they are important for happiness, yours and that of others. Nothing tragic about it. You can be authentic without being a-social.
So we should all act like babies….err okay. I mean I get what the article is saying, to a point, but c’mon, it’s hopelessly idealistic and won’t get you anywhere in real life.
People acting appropriately in a given situation in accordance to the written or unwritten rules of society is the lubricant that allows a modern civilization to exist.
I may really, really want to clobber that person who cut me off in traffic over the head with a femur like in the film 2001. That would be my true self, but I won’t do it because I’m not a cave person, and I would probably go to jail.
Really great article. I have come to this same enlightenment and some of the biggest masks we wear are those that we have been born with. Religion is one of those.
Thanks Silken,
Yes, we all wear masks and that fact is alarming. But, an even more alarming fact is that our ‘authentic’ self can never be our human self.
The human being itself is a ‘mask’ of our spiritual identity, which transcends physicality. The human mind & body are but the shadow or counterfeit of our true spiritual Self (capitalized because in Spirit, there is oneness of being).
This idea of the illusion of human personality is expressed in all of the major religious traditions: ‘Samsara’ and ‘Maya’ in Hinduism & Buddhism; and in Christianity, Paul has this to say, “For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.”
In ancient Greece, Diogenes roamed the streets of Athens with a lit lantern during daylight hours looking for an honest (authentic) person. He never found one.
Never wore one, and the nice thing is not having to keep up a front or the lies straight.
I suspect this is easier when your “authentic self” is a skinny fit rich literate cis white person living in the developed world.
Thank you Patricia
Its the very ” real” problem of knowing of being aware in the first place that you are actually wearing mask and that is surely the most important aspect in all of this.
Kind regards
Pete
I agree, often my older sister would reign my freeness, of expression in! Finally after she passed away, I got what she was trying to tell me. Act normal you’ll have a normal life, act strange, one opens themselves up to problems.
We’re born with a religious mask?
How so?
I knew a Christian guy who divorced his wife and moved to Hollywood with his mistress. He told Hollywood he was a Christian, up front so they might be saved right away, but Hollywood didn’t give him a job. He made enough money at slots in Las Vegas to finance his own Christian film project. It sold out a rented banquet room for 2 showings the first day, but people stopped coming because it wasn’t written, shot, or edited well. That’s when he started going to church.
I can only imagine (and certainly poorly at that). Fortunately, once people decide they do like you, you can become “odder” with them and they will see your odd behavior for what it is, rather than instantly judging, and rejecting, you.
One is not born with a mask, an infant is a blank slate and the masks come later in life when one understands what they do. How many 5 yr olds act like 5 yr olds in a church…they all do. No religious mask there, and babies have no problem bursting out in noise demanding to be changed or fed, if they wore a religious mask it would eliminate the need for the nursery. You do not seem to understand what a mask is.
That is not a mask, just showing proper moral behavior, doing the right thing is not a mask that is forming character
I think that when people wear masks, but they don’t know how to really wear it, people can see right through. I am not a big fan or fakery. Anytime someone would tell me to just pretend to be interested or to enjoy something, it can be really hard to do that when it is obviously not what I want to be doing else. I am not talking about work or school, but other things, like social (or other things) that are presented to someone that is viewed as important or an obligation, when it is not. When looking back at some of the jobs that I have held, I was the “go to” person most of the time. When cashiering, I was always the one who needed to do extra tasks while being expected to “stay at” my cash register. It resulted in getting yelled at a lot. Maybe this is just poor management or poor people skills, but it has always been difficult to tell a manager or supervisor that they have given me too much. I think that that is partly why some employers have high turnover.
What is this movie?
I agree with that. I am glad that someone mentioned it. I used to go to church with a friend of mine. Anytime I would go to church with her, he behavior always so draining that it was exhausting. My friend was always hell-bent on me going to church with her that I realized very quickly that I was not seeing her true self. She was always throwing God and bible passages in my face whenever I would try to talk to her. I never understood why people feel that they need to do that. It doesn’t add any benefit for me when people talk to me that way. She would exclude me from things that she did with friends in everyday life (outside of church), but it was so damn important that I go to church with her, even though I did not like her church. Anytime I would try bringing that up, she would say that all I should need is God. What the hell does that even mean?
I can say that I like my friend when we do things and go places, but I cannot stand her as a church person. If you have never experienced alienation in a church, then it is more difficult to understand how people wear masks with religion.
Yes, I appreciate, and empathize, about your difficult family member.
But the only morality our culture needs is the basis of ALL morality: “Do unto others…”. Without it, all cultures/civilizations deteriorate into nihilist anarchy. We all want, and thrive with, the white lies that are supportive and encouraging. The day to day niceness that makes us feel nice…so we, too, can be nice. Do unto others: It covers it all.
I think that there is more than one side to this. Of course when you have a role in your life like a parent or spouse, you sometimes do need to hold back how you really feel. That’s probably what is meant by saying that if a person is really stressed out, they need to go to a quiet place to vent or reflect on how they feel.
When I was a child and a teen, I was always, always expected to make a good impression on people regardless of how I felt. It could the parent of a kid who was bullying me and I was not allowed to show my feelings or even tell the parent what his/her child was doing. I always saw hypocrisy in that. So I think it depends on what you are shielding your true feelings for. Is it something or someone who matters in your life, or is it something you know deep down you would never want to give a second look to. I was thinking along the lines of things that are time wasters when people need to wear a mask.
Hollywood and Church, the two BIGGEST places ppl wear masks, IMO church being the biggest.
Looks like you’re replying to me, Ellen.
What does anything you said have to do with the questions I posed?
Are you saying your friend was born with that mask?
It was never distributed, but the name was “Barbara on the Barley Barge”.
My Christian actor friends are “ordinary” actors, not stars.
Maybe being Republican has something to do with it too, but any Christian that votes Democrat is a hypocrite.
I will point out that one can be a Christian and get parts in Hollywood Neal McDonough,
Denzel Washington and Candace Cameron-Bure for example are all devout Christians so your ascertain does not hold water…
If you say so, but I can assure you that if a Christian votes democrat they are not a hypocrite, you need to read up on the definition of Christian and go to the bible and see what it means and what it says about passing judgement only by looking at someones surface…see you can plainly tell that Trump was not the biblical choice for president just my holding up all that we know about him and lining it up with scripture, so if any thing Christians should of voted 3rd party but there fear would not let them…but I would not say they are hypocrits…oh and just a side not, no one is born a movie star they first start out as “ordinary” actors so no dice there either…
huh
Um, probably because she was not responding to you Brian, thad be my first bet cause I wonder where you got she was responding to you as yours was a question for David, would seen she clearly did not understand how to reply correctly.